Well-known sociology professor had believed career at university was at an end

By Sarah Kuta, Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
01/09/2014 06:16:36 PM MST

Updated:
04/08/2014 12:51:54 PM MDT

Sociology professor Patti Adler will return to the University of Colorado next week, with some reservations, to resume teaching her controversial "Deviance in U.S. Society" class on the Boulder campus, she announced Thursday.

"After more than a month marked by trauma, turmoil and great emotional distress for my family and myself, I am proud to say that the University of Colorado has backed down from their initial position and is allowing me to return to teach this semester in the course 'Deviance in U.S. Society,'" Adler said in a prepared statement.

CU-Boulder spokesman Bronson Hilliard confirmed that Adler will be returning to teach the course, but added that the university will not be apologizing to Adler. The professor and others have said that statements made by the university insinuated that she might have violated CU's sexual harassment policy.

"We stand by the statements we've made," Hilliard said. "Those statements were simply designed to articulate what we felt the issues were in this particular case. They were not designed to attack Professor Adler at any level and we don't believe they did."

Adler, who said she received a letter from College of Arts and Sciences Dean Steven Leigh on Wednesday inviting her back to teach, said she doesn't feel entirely welcome at CU.

She voiced concerns that the administration may put a "plant" in one of her classes to file complaints about her, which could lead to her termination without retirement benefits.

"The faculty want me back," Adler said. "The administration, I bet they don't. They would probably rather I not come back. But because of the public outcry and the media coverage, they can't treat me as bad as they would maybe like to."

CU administration working on informed consent

Classes resume Monday, and Adler's decision comes at the end of a nearly month-long controversy over a single lecture in the tenured sociology professor's long-running course on deviance.

The 500-person deviance class features a lecture about prostitution, which is presented as a skit performed by undergraduate teaching assistants.

After the skit was investigated by the Office of Discrimination and Harassment in November, Adler said she was told it was a "risk" to the university. CU officials later said they had concerns about students being coerced into participating in the skit and possibly being filmed without their consent.

Adler said the university gave her a choice between early retirement with an incentive, and a return to campus that would not include teaching her course on deviance.

In early December, Adler told her class that she would not return to campus after the winter break, causing an uproar among students who soon banded together to defend Adler.

Later, administrators said Adler could return to teach the course if it passed a review by a committee of her peers in sociology. When an ad hoc committee recommended that Adler be allowed to teach the deviance course, CU administrators said the sociology executive committee had to sign off on the course first before Adler was cleared to teach.

Once the executive committee gave Adler the nod, she weighed her options while consulting with Evergreen-based attorney Bill Finger.

The only change either committee recommended for Adler's course is that she obtain "full informed consent" from students who participate in the prostitution skit.

Hilliard said CU's administration will work with the Boulder Faculty Assembly to determine how Adler should go about getting consent from students in the future.

"The concerns about students entering into the role-playing that's inherent in the skit, we're on our way to resolving those with the informed consent process," Hilliard said. "What's important is that students understand they won't be penalized in any way if they choose not to participate in the skit and that they give their official consent for participation."

'Rosa Parks of sociology and academia'

Adler said she decided to return to teach her course on deviance on principle and because of the support she received from students, past students, fellow faculty members and national organizations. She said she felt like she had to come back to stand up for faculty members at CU and at other universities and their rights to due process and academic freedom.

She described returning to teach as a "moral victory," and said she felt a little bit like the "Rosa Parks of sociology and academia."

Though Adler wouldn't say how long she plans to teach at CU, she encouraged students to register for the spring semester deviance course because it "could be the last waltz."

In addition to the deviance course, Adler will also lead a course for teaching assistants on teaching sociology.

She also wouldn't speak definitively about any plans to take legal action against the school, though she didn't know if she had "the stomach" for a lawsuit, she said, which would be expensive and emotional.

In the last month, Adler's situation has attracted attention from groups such as the American Association of University Professors and the Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Many groups and Boulder faculty members voiced their concern over how the university treated Adler, and said they felt Adler's academic freedom had been violated.

In her statement Thursday, Adler criticized the Office of Discrimination and Harassment for its "overreach," writing that schools and universities are quashing academic freedom and creativity for the sake of protecting themselves from exposure or fault.

"Universities and schools at all levels around the globe are increasingly sacrificing academic freedom as they become more concerned with risk and liability than with creating an environment in which creativity and ideas can flourish and students can be challenged to expand their horizons," she wrote.

Boulder Faculty Assembly chairman Paul Chinowsky said regardless of Adler's decision, the situation has raised questions about how processes at CU work.

He said the faculty and administration plan to work together to clarify any confusing policies and better inform faculty about the role of the Office of Discrimination and Harassment and to make sure that no "ambiguity" exists in the future.

Chinowsky added that one of the major concerns he's heard from faculty is how to balance their own concerns about academic freedom with the concerns of students.

"The one thing the Patti Adler situation did highlight was that there's a lot more questions than answers that faculty have and that of course makes people nervous," he said. "What do (faculty) not know? What do they just not understand and what is it that needs to be improved? We've got an agreement with the administration to work together on this."

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